1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to artificially lifted oil wells. More particularly, this invention relates to real-time monitoring and failure prediction of electrical submersible pumps.
2. Description of Related Art
In many oil wells, an artificial lift system is employed to lift fluid (e.g., petroleum) from a subterranean reservoir to a collection point. In many applications, the artificial lift system includes an electrical submersible pump that is positioned within a wellbore. The pump intakes fluid from the wellbore and pumps the fluid upwardly or laterally through the wellbore to the collection point. During extended operation, the components of the electrical submersible pump may be subject to degradation or breakage, which can lead to unwanted well intervention activities such as workovers.
In many applications, the electrical submersible pumps are installed in wells that are offshore, subsea, or in remote areas that are not easily accessible for intervention and workover. In these applications, it would be beneficial to provide operators with the ability to accurately monitor the condition of the electrical submersible pumps and effectively predict failure before it occurs such that equipment can be efficiently mobilized before a pump fails. To this end, systems have been developed that provide real-time data acquisition and monitoring of an electrical submersible pump. These systems enable operators to monitor in real-time the operational characteristics of the pump and intelligently control the operation of the pump. Such operations allow operators to identify changing well conditions as well as changing pump characteristics due to pump wear and instability, and to optimize the performance of the pump system based thereon. Such operations also allow operators to take immediate remedial action if conditions warrant such action.
Disadvantageously, current monitoring systems require experienced operators to monitor and analyze in detail the operating conditions of the pump in order to identify operating conditions that predict if and when failure of the pump system is imminent. Employing such an experienced operator (or providing an inexperienced operator with the necessary amount of training) is difficult to accomplish and costly over the operational lifetime of the pump system.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide an electrical submersible pump monitoring system that provides a simple and user-friendly mechanism for accurately predicting pump failure and which avoids the difficulties and costs associated with the prior art systems.